27JS373KHR6K.In an interview with CBS’s Steve Kroft, President Barack Obama cast aside the notion that most Americans do not believe that his stimulus bill worked. “Let me stop you there, Steve. First of all, there’s not a general perception that the stimulus didn’t work,” the president said during the tense interview. He admitted, though, that “when it comes to the economy, we’ve got a lot more work to do.”

“You know, we did all the right things to prevent a Great Depression and to get the economy growing again and to get job creation going again,” he explained. “But it hasn’t made up for the hole that was created in those six, nine, 12 months before my economic policies took effect.”

The president also pushed back on claims that his speech on Tuesday in Osawatomie, Kansas, called for the redistribution of wealth, saying he’s just asking “What’s happened to the American deal that says, you know, we are focused on building a strong middle class?”

“This is not because I’m interested in punishing the rich, I want everybody to be rich, that’s great,” he said. “It has to do with the fact that the less I’m asking you or me to do, the more I’m asking somebody who’s in a much tougher position to sacrifice. And that is basic math.”

Obama expressed frustration that any serious conversation about wealth devolves into charges of “class warfare.”

“Our politics has gotten to the point where we can’t have an honest conversation about the greatest income inequality since the 1920s,” he said. “And we can’t have an honest conversation about the irresponsibility that resulted in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, without somebody saying that somehow we’re being divisive.”